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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Northwest Flower and Garden Show goes Hollywood

Seattle’s really big garden show — the biggest horticultural extravaganza of its kind on the West Coast and the second-biggest garden show in North America after Philadelphia’s event — is about to turn 25.

Seattle’s garden show is about to turn 25.

Seattle’s really big garden show — the biggest horticultural extravaganza of its kind on the West Coast and the second-biggest garden show in North America after Philadelphia’s event — is about to turn 25.

To celebrate, the five-day Northwest Flower and Garden Show, which will be held from Feb. 20 to 24 in the Washington State Convention Centre in downtown Seattle, has decided to go Hollywood and look to the silver screen for its silver anniversary and roll out the red carpet and work a little movie magic.

Since it is such a special occasion, The Vancouver Sun has teamed up with the show organizers to give away a fabulous three-night getaway package with tickets to the show’s opening-night reception, two-day show passes, plus three $200 gift certificates to Seattle restaurants. The total prize package is worth $1,300. The show has also worked a deal with a top Seattle hotel to offer Canadians an exclusive room rate, plus a $29 two-day pass for the show, plus other concessions. See details about the give away and this special offer on page C4.

This year, the show’s botanical showcase will be one of the most imaginative and creative in its history. The 24 major display gardens, which are really the heart and soul of the show, will each adopt the theme of a popular movie.

There’ll be a Middle Earth hobbit’s garden featuring plants native to New Zealand, where The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were filmed.

This is one way Washington Park Arboretum has chosen to promote its plan to built an “eco-graphic New Zealand forest”.

Lovers of sci-fi movies will get a kick out of seeing the Star Wars saga interpreted as a rebellion against contemporary food trends with gardeners coming together on a horticultural quest to use “the force” of nature to establish an eco-friendly “edible forest sanctuary”.

Other sci-fi movie titles will be referenced in such gardens as Honey I Shrunk the Yard, which will look at how to create a garden in only 560 square feet, and Alien on Vacation – Xenomorph Meets Earth’s Most Lethal Plant Colony, which will contain a “circle of death” showcasing some of the most deadly native plants in the Pacific Northwest.

For romantics, there’ll be Audrey’s Roman Holiday, featuring a Mediterranean-style garden complete with lion’s head fountain, classical architectural accents and a Vespa scooter.

All these elements will combine with exotic plant material to provide the perfect backdrop for the famous 1952 love story starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.

One of my favourite movies, Enchanted April, has been picked by one designer who intends to recreate the sultry atmosphere of a 1920s Italian villa, but with a Pacific Northwest flavour.

A River Runs Through It will feature a verdant four-season garden with an emphasis on being friendly to native wildlife. The centrepiece will be a stream as a sanctuary for native black bears, cougars, eagles and trout.

Pillow Talk will take a more whimsical approach, exploring how opposites attract. It will have an ultrafeminine, 50s-style garden, full of colourful blooms and textures for her, and a low-maintenance garden with the accent on “masculine serenity” for him.

Jardin Noir – Film Noir in a Modern Garden will be one of the few “cult” movie gardens.

The concept is that the garden is “the lair of a beautiful and alluring femme fatale out to doublecross the film’s anti-hero”.

Botanically, the garden will feature a mixture of blue-toned plants, as well as dark and light plants with touches of red to suggest a “plot twist”. To create atmosphere, the garden will make clever use of venetian blinds and mirrors to cast “grids of moody light”.

The orchid society intends to take a more straightforward approach and is hoping showgoers will be amused by its playful tongue-in-cheek renaming of the Oscars as the “Orchidemy Awards” and be wowed by diverse displays of orchids species.

Living Among the Stars will be a glamorous “garden escape” suitable for a busy actor or stargazer. It aims to demonstrate how to achieve privacy in a garden without creating a prison-like atmosphere. In this case, the main goal is to thwart the efforts of any prying paparazzi.

The Lost Gardener — A Journey from the Wild to the Cultivated will explore themes from a variety of blockbuster movies, including Jurassic Park, King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But at the core, there is a more serious goal: to get people to value rare and protect endangered plant species.

Other tribute gardens will include Saturday Night Fever, Zorba the Greek, The Wizard of Oz, Castaway and Grimm fairy tales.

What makes this garden show unique is that it has so much more to offer.

The display gardens may well be the primary draw, but there will also be a large marketplace, featuring a vast range of gardening products and accessories, plus a comprehensive lecture series with dozens of speakers covering pretty much every gardening topic.

More than 75 nurseries, 35 educational/garden resource organizations and at least 250 independent exhibitors will take part in the marketplace.

The lecture series runs from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., with more than 100 talks scheduled in three locations.

More than 60,000 people are expected to attend the show, many travelling down from B.C. for the event. Only the Philadelphia Show, held in March, is bigger, being the world’s biggest indoor show.

But the show also benefits from its climatically privileged location on the West Coast and having such a legion of talented local garden designers and experts to draw on.

Another big part of the show’s appeal is that it also offers West Coast garden-lovers a welcome breath of spring.

More than six acres of convention floor space will be covered with thousands of fragrant spring flowers, such as hyacinths, daffodils and sarcococca, as well as many beautiful shrubs and perennial flower displays designed to lift the spirits and get green thumbs excited again about a new season in the garden.

Tickets: $20 ($16 if purchased before Feb 20); $29 two-day passes; $15 for group rates; $10 for half day; $5 for teenagers 13 — 17, free for children under 12.

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